Police Office; a circumstance rather apparently ungracious, the voice of the church modulated by the tongue of civil authority. I love better to hear the free swing of the gum-tree bell.

PORT PHILLIP RAIN TABLE.

The scale is one inch and hundredths. For this I must acknowledge myself indebted to Edward Curr, Esq. of St. Heliers, a Roman Catholic gentleman, an observant and intelligent resident of the colony.

This is a goodly quantity of rain it must be admitted, which, but for the dryness of the atmosphere, warmth of the climate, and quick evaporation, would not only prove too abundant but unhealthful. Everything considered, the climate is, as Mr. Curr himself observed to me, as near perfection as possible. Still the rain falls too scantily in the heat of summer, and a little too heavily in winter; and then, owing to the season, lies too long.

We rarely meet with, to use Milton's term, "good unmixed" in man, much less in countries. We must be thankful for the pure dry atmosphere of Australia; its almost everlastingly diaphanous heavens; its salubrity; its abundant and cheap food; yet there are great drawbacks. Its few rivers, and far between; its immense stony and sterile ranges; its small quantity of rich soil, and that too often found where it is liable to floods; its great scarcity of spring water, and less of good. England, how unquestionably superior to Australia in these latter respects, yet how unhappily circumstanced as regards the former! If in England there is a more humid atmosphere, a

greener land, abundance of wells, springs, brooks and rivers, there is also an endless list of human ailments, coughs, colds, agues, consumptions-their accompaniments.

HOME APPOINTMENT OF COLONIAL GOVERNMENT

OFFICERS.

I have heard an intelligent colonist complain that the Homeappointment of Colonial Government Officers had, amongst other evil influences, this, that such persons introduce a more expensive system of family expenditure into the colony, and make it fashionable by their influence and example; and that the disappearance of the old custom of colonial masters and servants taking their meals together, and living on more homely food, is one effect of such influence.

Thus much is advanced by homely regard for the past against modern refinement-not in the colonies alone; but it should be borne in mind whether some good may not accompany such refinement; there may be diffused a little moral and religious purification from the folds of garments of an older civilisation, not unneeded in the atmosphere of penal colonies; high principle, let us hope, and moral worth in their divinest revelations. There is another objection to such officers. I quote Mr. Ross, of Hobart Town :

"In place of such men becoming an acquisition to the colony they become a sensible mischief, sapping it of its best resources, shutting out legitimate settlers, and occupying their place to the drawback and detriment of the rising community such as swarm round the door of the Lieutenant-Governor's office, with the hope of obtaining some easy post, in which, after a few years, they may save up wherewithal like him, and be enabled to desert the colony with a portion of its wealth. It was the knowledge of this fact that induced Governor Macquarie to recommend the government at home to give the preference to family men in sending out persons to fill public situations, there being less likelihood of such persons studying directly colonial spoliation."

It is not to be wondered at that the old and permanent colonists should regard such transfer of colonial cash to England as a notorious evil; still, if they cannot detain in the new country all the wealth it has in it, received or generated, let the Australians and Tasmanians rest satisfied with what they do receive and retain; for, for every pound that leaves them, one hundred

will be returned to them from England. Let but a few rich settlers return home, that is, enriched by the colonies, and, like the bunches of grapes carried from the Land of Promise, which made such a sensible impression on the Israelites, and the golden fruits of colonial enterprise will not all be lost to the colonies. It is only unfortunate for us that such has been the most wretched new land-sale system of the colonies, and such their deplorable consequent condition, that no Calebs or Joshuas can bear back to the Father-land any fruit except such as is the fabled growth of the Dead Sea-ashes and bitterness.

SOLITARY COGITATIONS.

Oftentimes when hastily bending my way to Melbourne, internally busied with ordinary cares, or occupied with mental cogitations of the present or the past, there falls upon my ear the gentlest note that was ever uttered by the bill of bird, "Quick-enough, quick-enough, quick-enough." Kindly spirited creature! Gentlest of taskmasters! It intimates, like Solomon, that there is a time for everything, time enough; and that it were wise that I should relax my steps, and look around me a little more leisurely, were it only to observe how gracefully, regarded or not, the *shiac-trees are waving their tresses in the wind; how freshly green are the mimosas; how venerable, antique, and sturdy, are the ashy-looking boles and boughs of the giant gum-trees; and how singular in appearance are the Banksias, prim and formal-looking trees, studded all over with the last year's cones interspersed thickly with this year's blossoms, willow catkin-like, only not thin or drooping, ruddy colouring blent with yellow.

This tree the Australians call Honeysuckle; little short of blasphemy. Surely deep mortal forgetfulness must have fallen upon the person who so designated it. What! would he have us believe that there is the slightest resemblance in gracefulness or fragrance, betwixt this besom of a tree, and our sweet, wild, rural, lover-worshipped, arm-entwining, gay, and fantastic, English woodbine? It is nothing less than high treason against the regality and poetry of Nature! Still, let us not be angry; some sad and home-sick personage might, out of the world of old affections, so call it, that he might be less forlorn in exile. Nay, even in his imagination seeing the really delicious English shrub, and slightly and lovelessly regarding this, he might thus

*Shiac is the native name-vulgarised to she-oak.

felicitously beguile himself with the presence of the remembered

sweet : thus

“ Wasting his kindliness on stocks and stones,

And on the vacant air;"

so let us in charity believe.

But, what sound is this ? The very hum of a clover fieldyes, these are surely English bees-certainly they are-and in these flowers. Well, now, the blossoms do a little more resemble honeysuckles-English woodbines.

Alas, poor fools ! what could bring you from the flower-gardens and fields, the parterres of art and nature, the heaths, slopes, and uplands, of your native land! But I forget myself; these simple creatures know nothing of the system so fashionable in our human world-the voluntary. These, called of old, by quaint poets, sweet thieves, though in spirit free as the breeze of summer, wild woodland wanderers though they be, have not been guilty of this far and outlandish quest. The swallow, our English visitor, may come and go with inconstant wing, but the bee is no restless-souled emigrant, no half-witted voluntary exile. These plunderers of bud and blossom, like other freebooters, have been certainly transported; lagged out for life for some most natural thieveries, some kind of instinctive poaching. Here, like silly poets, they will find little quintessence in the soul of things, little of the golden poetry of bud and blossom, little of any kind of gold. Whatever can compensate to them the loss of their old and familiar world of sweets-their English paradise ? Even now, whilst I think of it, there seems a sadder tone in the murmurous sound which I hear. I must believe that they see the place whence they were taken. They see the small straw-roofed cottage, under whose far-protruding thatch their own little houses stood. There are the row of hives. The red rose and the white nod against the diamond panes of the window, and peep in at the door. The grave old cottager, and the clean, homely matron, pass silently in and about, amidst the scent of ladslove, thyme, and lilac. The shrill chirp of a sparrow is above them, and the lark's song is in the sky. The fields are all gold and silver-a waving flood of fragrance.

Alas, poor exiles ! Where now are your common heritage of blossomed bean-fields? your heath of purple ling and golden broom? your fields of ruddy clover? your homesteads full of marjoram and meadow-sweet? where are the real honeysuckles and the wild red roses-full of dews, and shadows, and sunshine, and sleep-full to overflowing with your sweet bee-wine ?

A GOOD MARK.

I wondered often what was the meaning of this, amongst many other peculiar colonial phrases, "Is the man a good mark?" Our bullock-driver had it familiarly in his mouth. I heard it casually from the lips of apparently respectable settlers as they rode on the highway, “Such and such a one is a good mark!"simply a person who pays his men their wages, without delays or drawbacks; a man to whom you may sell anything safely for there are in the colony people who are regularly summoned before the magistrates by every servant they employ for wages. They seem to like to do everything publicly, legally, and so become, notoriously, not "good marks."

"A more-pork kind of fellow," is a man of cut-and-dry phrases; a person remarkable for nothing new in common conversation. This, by some, is thought very expressive; the more-pork being a kind of Australian owl, notorious for its wearying nightly iteration, "More pork, more pork."

The common people are not destitute of what Wordsworth calls "the poetry of common speech," many of their similes being very forcibly and naturally drawn from objects familiarly in sight, and quite Australian.

"Poor as a bandicoot,' ""Miserable as a shag on a rock," &c.; these and others I very frequently heard them make use of. I stared at a man one day for saying that a certain allotment of land was 66 an old-man allotment: he meant a large allotment —the old-man kangaroo being the largest kangaroo.

ECONOMY AND MORALITY IN CONVICT COLONIES.

There are, and have been, in Van Diemen's Land abundance of small settlers, and not a few of the more wealthy-if to possess large tracts of land entitle them to be considered more opulentwho manage their affairs in the most miserable, careless, and uneconomical manner imaginable. Almost every thing is done on the credit system and by barter. The land is purchased or rented, and for the seed to sow it with they go to some of the town storekeepers; and the crop, even before it is in the ground, is thus mortgaged; for the wool, before it is shorn, they obtain rations-tea, sugar, flour, salt provisions, clothing of all kindsall to be paid for with the growing crops.

Any man possessed of sheep or cattle, farm or rural location of any kind, opens an account with the storekeeper. Of these